in reply to sorting an associated array

Sort Hash by values. Unlike hash keys, hash values are not guaranteed to be unique. If you sort a hash by only its values, the sort order of two elements with the same value may change when you add or delete other values. To do a stable sort by hash values, do a primary sort by value and a secondary sort by key:

%hash = ( Elliot => Babbage, Charles => Babbage, Grace => Hopper, Herman => Hollerith ); @sorted = map { { ($_ => $hash{$_}) } } sort { $hash{$a} cmp $hash{$b} or $a cmp $b } keys %hash; foreach $hashref (@sorted) { ($key, $value) = each %$hashref; print "$key => $value\n"; }
Charles => Babbage
Elliot => Babbage
Herman => Hollerith
Grace => Hopper
Numerical Sort.
my %data = (bananas => 1,oranges => 7,apples => 12, mangoes => 3,pears + => 8,); # Using <=> instead of cmp because of the numbers foreach my $fruit (sort {$data{$a} <=> $data{$b}} keys %data) { print $fruit . ": " . $data{$fruit} . "\n"; }

All is well

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Re^2: sorting an associated array
by Laurent_R (Canon) on Apr 23, 2014 at 21:00 UTC
    Hmm, although it is indeed a bit ambiguous, my understanding of the requirement is to sort the hash on the values of the keys, not on the values of the hash for such keys.